How often are we in a surrounding and actively pay attention to how it makes us feel? What does the place emote and does that make a difference to ourselves? In the Dead Sleepy series, I wanted to create an ambiguity within landscapes that are both classic and urban.

I have placed myself in various locations to appear either dead or asleep. Visually there is a fine line between the two if we exclude the temporal aspect, a newly deceased person may appear to be asleep until they erode and become part of the earth.

I have covered myself with a plastic sheet that depending on the light and the way it is draped over my body appears as either a white bed sheet or a ravaged body bag. The same material became the covering of my corpse or my nude body asleep. The connotations of the place I am in and the differences in my body posture oscillate between these two states, one temporary and one permanent.

The viewer has to be actively involved to decipher or decode what has happened or is happening. In less than a moment I change between living and dead, in another moment where I am dead, I become a suicidal exhibitionist or a victim of a crime.

Street photography is not a genre that I often associate myself with, and despite the fact that David Bate writes about genres as “not fixed, they are mutable. Genres are processes, which evolve and develop or mutate into hybrids”, I was stuck in a rut when it came to producing a set within the genre in black and white 35mm film. Since the Gezi Park Riots in the summer of 2013 in Istanbul, I stayed away from compositions that were far too out of my own control, perhaps I was becoming, if not, became a control freak.

Since leaving my medical career behind, I never looked back and whilst not even thinking about my life back then, a friend of mine suggested that I should not waste what I have learnt in those 8 years and suggested that I could somehow incorporate that knowledge or experience to my photographic work. So what did I learn from my past career? One thing that is very clear, don’t embark on a long journey that you do not feel absolutely passionate about; not having much time for yourself outside of your career becomes all too consuming when you don’t enjoy what you do. But apart from this generic textbook life lesson, I did learn that hospitals are peculiar places.

Yes, hospitals are peculiar. There was this one time when I saw a man walking down the corridor of a psychiatric hospital with a hawk on his shoulder. I was so shocked that I needed to verify what I was seeing with a colleague of mine. The following few days we were confronted by many avian references dotted around. In another hospital there was an elevator of doom, that what we called it, as it did not have a door or any other way of securing one’s self- the perfect teen-slasher movie prop. Even the more mundane things were peculiar- how many people can imagine watching a South Asian dance performance right in the middle of the hospital or buying the freshest, most exotic fruits in the neighborhood?

Coming across peculiarities within a hospital is not something I could have controlled as most happened by chance, but I was able to find things or places within grounds of several hospitals that many would not imagine that it belonged. The project that started with just photographing the people outside of hospitals quickly became about the unexpected, the Non-Hospital Scenes.

Spending school holidays in my grandparent’s country house meant that each time there would be a different product waiting to be sold, occupying one of the rooms. The excitement of seeing what was stacked up was almost more exciting than seeing family.

One of these products was the narcissus flower. Opening the room and being hit by the intense, almost toxic smell was as impressive as the mountain formed by the flowers.

The region was well known to grow the flower and furthermore, the small creek that was walking distance from the house was said to be the same body of water that Narcissus saw his own reflection and feel in love, the same body of water in which he drowned.

His story has always interested me, as I could never imagine liking myself enough that I would fall in love. Negative feelings about self-image is much more prevalent for the general population and myself.

In this series I wanted to show bodies that were altered by their own reflections to represent the fluctuations within our own self-image. It is our thoughts, our own reflections that cause distortion.

Ever since I modelled in a live installation piece in Barbican by Reza Aramesh in late 2007 for the “Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now”show, the architecture of The Barbican and its surrounding area has interested me. The large concrete structures demand authority and bang their fists on the table in an uncontrolled and clumsy manner.

To pay homage to the retro Polaroid with its wave of comeback, I purchased film from The Impossible Project to experiment. I wanted to take power back from the Brutal buildings and manicure the rough edged nails those fists had curled up inside their palms.

The short video here shows the process of making a “polaroid emulsion lift”.

Initially keeping a diary felt like something I would not enjoy and perhaps I was fearful of the revelations that it potentially held for me. Thoughts are fluid like water; they move, they evaporate or become solid. Storing them in a diary means keeping the water at 20 degrees.

Now I cherish my diary like treasure, something I always want to have close by, an archive of my temporal existence. Here are few pages from it.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” This is a quote from Oscar Wilde. Reading this I can not stop thinking about questions such as do we meet thousands of other people when we meet one individual, how much do other people influence us in the formation of our own identity and are we who we think we are or what other people perceive us to be.

Like the first few times that you look in the mirror and the period in which your body changes alongside with your facial features, you meet yourself, at least the physical self.

China is changing just like everybody else but a lot of the time she chooses to use the mirror inside the closet, concealing the view so others can not see her, adore her, judge her, hate her, feel indifferently… She is looking at an old photograph and she is filled with bittersweet nostalgia. She is not who she was back then and now she is just an acquaintance to her former self. At times she is proud of where she is, the person she has become after all the tragedies and obstacles but she has enough sense of humor to mock her in a self-deprecating manner.

Under Mao’s rule, the Cultural Revolution of 1966 meant that only artwork that was supporting the socialist society was allowed to exist. Artists whose work deemed to be too bourgeoisie or anti-socialist were persecuted and prevented from working. The almost oxymoron of encouraging exploration of traditional methods whilst forbidding the return to traditional themes confused many.

It was only after Mao’s death that the period of state supported art ended. This opened the doors for artists to reflect upon the new realities that China is now facing.

CHINA NOW exhibition focuses on the photographers from the post-cultural revolution China to reintroduce the country that is in hiding. The Internet censorship becomes the closet doors that hold China and her mirror inside whilst the gallery space holds the flies on the wall that look at her. Strangers catch a glimpse of China to reacquaint after a long period of silence.

The theme of identity is explored through the way an outsider may perceive one. Tseng Kwong Chi’s self portraits pokes fun at the way Westerner’s perceived China in the 1980’s whilst Sun Ji’s decaying landscapes makes an introduction to nostalgia in reference to changing urbanscapes and what this may mean at an individual level.

Zhe Chen and Chi Peng deal with confusion of identity and consubstantiality. Hong Hao’s still-lives allows the viewer to question if what we own is whom we are by accepting the viewer to peek into his belongings and Song Chao equally opens up by sharing his daily working life.

Several months ago I published a mini series of images that was inspired by the summer riots of Istanbul- resISTANBUL. Just over a year after I wanted to share the actual images from the numerous days that thousands of people protested not only to save a small green space in the centre of urban Istanbul, but also to protect the voices of millions against a government that is getting more corrupt each day.

The images were taken with a digital camera and then converted to film to allow a complete tactile control of the printing process. As the actual voice of a protestor is stronger than a digital signature or “like” on a social media platform, processing with analog techniques felt absolutely right for this body of work.

The first time I came across the name Ara, literally meaning in-between, was in Istanbul. Ara Cafe sits snuggled between a busy bustling high street and a quiet narrow street meandering towards the Bosphorus. Little did I know that this exact building was where the world renowned photographer Ara Gülergrew up.

Ara was born in Istanbul to an Armenian family in 1928. Growing up, his goal was to become a film director or a script writer. Although he became Turkey’s most celebrated photographer, he did reach his goal in 1975 when he directed the surrealistic 18mm movie, End of a Hero. He started working for newspapers as a photographer and as he became more known, in 1953 he met one of the founding members of Magnum Photos, Henri Cartier-Bresson. This meeting became the pivotal moment in his career as he became the Turkish representative to the photographic agency.

His list of awards is endless and it includes Master of Leica in 1962 as well as being listed as the Top 7 Photographers of the World by The Photography Annual Anthology. He is most renowned for his Lost Istanbul work where he stays faithful to his photojournalistic roots but this did not stop him from travelling the world and photographing people as famous as Sofia Loren, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.

No matter which part of the world he may be photographing, people always feature in his works. Whilst some of these maybe joyful or playful, Güler often portrays social issues. He does not shy away from showing the uncomfortable or the sinister. His Leica camera has captured Istanbul through decades of change and it would not be inaccurate to say that these hold an archival value. The feeling of melancholia that resonates throughout his Lost Istanbul work could be traced to the photographer’s frustration with the loss of Istanbul’s aesthetic. As the migration from Anatolian towns continue, the concrete jungle expands. He states that the younger generation that live in the city are not aware the poetic or romantic aspect of the city.

He uses the banks of the Bosphorus often, the stretch of sea that separates Asia Minor from Europe, to use as a metaphor for separation. The sea is what distances us from others as well as ourselves. In his photograph Saying good-bye on the Galata quay taken in 1955,a woman with a headscarf is reaching towards the man inside the boat. The framing makes use of the geometric shapes formed by the horizontal lines along the metallic ship and the vertical as well as slanting lines formed by ropes attaching to a pulley. I initially assumed that the man and the woman were a couple and they were reaching out to each other to say good-bye one last time until the unforeseeable future. Due to the fact that the ship is white in colour, it is not very obvious that the man is reaching towards a folded piece of paper that the woman is passing to him. This changes the story of the photograph as we are left wondering what is written in that folded piece of paper. Is it her feelings that she could not share with him? Is it a letter from someone that he refuses to see in person or someone that just couldn’t be there?

Güler states that photography is not art although he accepts that masters such as Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier-Bresson have visual education, this does not make them artists. He believes “photography is reality above all else” and that it is his job to record what he sees. To him, the dark room tricks are not acceptable as he hates the idea of becoming an artist.

Güler has a list of qualities to describe what makes a good photographer; “A photographer must be well equipped… They need to know painting, know music, understand theatre, read a lot, decide in an instant and all in all be very intelligent”. Whilst I would strive to possess all these qualities he describes, I do see myself as an artist and as a photographer I feel that I have to show my own reality. Perhaps all artists are journalists since they share their version of ideas, concepts and occurrences.

I have seen this photograph in Paris Photo fair as part of London-based Michael Hoppen Gallery’s exhibition. The photograph really stood out as it was placed next to the Chloe Sells‘ uber-vibrant mixed media prints. The highly contrasting and rough feeling black and white print stood tall amongst the colourful haze of the gallery.

The scene consists of two rough feet resting on top of soft furnishings. The feet are touching along the heels and parted along the toes to allow a hand and the head of a small puppy through.

The head of the puppy is so small that it is not immediately recognisable. The composition is formed to resemble childbirth and there is little contrast of tone between the hand and the head. The detail that really stands out for me is the contrast of the dog’s head to the feet and hand. The newborn is smooth, has closed eyes and symbolises; innocence, the untainted and naivety. The feet and hand that surround it resemble a human pelvis, a broken, aged and infertile pelvis.

Roger Ballen is an American photographer that lived in South Africa since the 70’s. He is well known for his work in the fringes of the society. He was both celebrated and criticized for photographing the post-apartheid whites that were left in poverty. He is also well recognised for the first music video he directed- “I fink u freaky” by the Die Antwoord, which also featured heavy contrasting black and white scenes.